Oh, completely. But if the victory condition is “get 20 Frags” and there’s a general sense in the current ruleset that the gameplay is “play cleverly to gain maybe 2 Frags per week”, I can see why a player lagging behind with zero Frags might decide to bow out rather than try to catch up.

I hate to point fingers like this, but the onus falls on Bucky to make it clear where he wants his dynasty to go. If this is what he has in mind, then so be it. But if he wants something to change, he needs to start proposing some major changes soon or there may not be many people left to play it. I looked back at Bucky’s recent proposals, and they have all been “fix” proposals that address some minor issue that was either already fixed or brought up in IRC.

Not sure what the consensus is these days, but I think “Emperor as gamesmaster” is something of a minority view of BlogNomic - most dynasties are led by their players, and don’t require the Emperor to have all the big ideas or fix all the problems. So long as Bucky is voting reliably enough to resolve deferentials, I’d say he was doing his job.

I know that in my own dynasties, I try to act as gamesmaster but only if I think the dynasty’s dropping in activity, or the other players are short of ideas. If people are continuously coming up with ideas without my help, I just let them, as their ideas are often better than mine.

What is this?

BlogNomic is an online Nomic: a self-modifying game
where changing the rules is part of the game. Players make blog posts proposing additions or alterations to the ruleset, discussing
and casting votes in the
comments: if enough vote in favour, the rules are changed and play continues.

The game has been running since 2003 and resets every month or so. New players are always welcome and
can join in at any time.

"Nomic is a game in which changing the rules is a move. In that respect it differs from almost every other game. The primary activity of Nomic is proposing changes in the rules, debating the wisdom of changing them in that way, voting on the changes, deciding what can and cannot be done afterwards, and doing it. Even this core of the game, of course, can be changed."